


If There's An Us

by flipflop_diva



Category: Quantico (TV)
Genre: Background Alex/Ryan, Background Caleb/Shelby, Drinking Games, During Canon, F/F, First Meetings, First Time, Mild Sexual Content, Missing Scene, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-24
Updated: 2015-12-24
Packaged: 2018-05-07 21:15:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,180
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5471006
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flipflop_diva/pseuds/flipflop_diva
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This was nothing like either of them ever expected. And to think it all started with a game of spin the bottle.</p>
            </blockquote>





	If There's An Us

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thesleepingsatellite](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thesleepingsatellite/gifts).



> Slight spoilers here and there for all aired episodes of Quantico (through the winter finale). Based on the prompt _FBI trainees playing spin the bottle while at Quantico_
> 
> Happy Yuletide, thesleepingsatellite! I hope you enjoy!

_They teach us at Quantico to expect surprises._  
They teach us that not everyone, or everything, is who or what they seem to be.  
They teach us to look deeper, to ask questions, to learn more.  
They want us to look inside ourselves, to see who we really are. Then, they say, we can understand others.  
They teach us to be prepared, to expect anything.  
My name is Alex Parrish and I didn’t expect this.  
I don’t think she did either. 

•••

“So what _do_ Quantico trainees do on their first night together?” 

Shelby’s lips quirk up in a slight smile and her laugh makes the others in the room turn to look at her. She isn’t at all the type of girl Alex has ever hooked up with before, or even one she would normally give a second look to, but there is something about her that defies that stereotypical first impression. Not the Southern charm or the accent or the blonde hair, but something more, something deeper. She makes Alex want to get to know her, to uncover her secrets, to learn who she really is …

But first. 

“I hear they all get to know each other by playing spin the bottle,” Alex says, deadly serious. She’s good at lying, at showing no emotion. She looks around, her eyes daring anyone to disagree with her, but her lips are curving upward, making them guess if this rule is real or just imagined or maybe sometimes real.

Some of the trainees shift uncomfortably — Nemah, Simon … she thinks those are their names. Others glance around and seem perfectly content with this. Ryan is staring at her like he knows she’s full of shit. Shelby still has that slight smile going on.

Caleb is the one who answers, which doesn’t surprise her really because he looks like the type of guy who never says no to things like spinning the bottle or making out with other people. 

“Oh, yes, they do,” he crows, and maybe it’s because he sounds so confident, but for some reason everyone believes him, and soon enough they are making a circle, gathering into position, and then the bottle is spinning and Natalie — she thinks her name is Natalie — is pecking some guy she doesn’t know so fast that the others are chortling her. She laughs, too, but then it’s her turn, and she gets Caleb, and wow, what did she get herself into?

•••

Her lips are soft, as soft as Alex expects them to be actually, and she tastes slightly of bubble gum and mint. Also what Alex would have expected her to taste like, even though they have been drinking vodka and whiskey and bourbon for the past couple hours because Caleb also says no one goes to Quantico without having plenty of alcohol on hand. But her hands, the way she grabs Alex’s shirt and presses her lips against hers hard — lips mashing, teeth bumping, as though it is more than the dare of the bottle pointed toward her that is making her do this, as though something else is drawing them together, as if she feels something between them too — that is something that Alex doesn’t expect.

As they pull apart, Shelby laughs, that laugh that is already distinctly hers, soft and airy but with a touch of so much more and Alex can smell the soft scent of whiskey on her breath. Alex thinks she could find this girl beautiful, but instead, she just smirks and looks around at the open-mouthed expressions on the faces of the other recruits. 

“Well, that’s one way to get to know your roommate,” she says.

“Oh, no,” Shelby says, and now she is smirking, too, in a way that tells Alex this girl is smart, so smart. “You don’t know me at all.”

•••

She feels like maybe they know each other now. They talk more, soft conversations in the deep of night when they are supposed to be sleeping. Mostly about nothing, sometimes about everything. She knows Shelby’s first dog was named Spot and she won a spelling bee in third grade and she learned to ride horses when she was four. But she doesn’t know who Shelby calls in the early hours of the morning or what she is doing when she shuts her laptop so fast and tries to pretend she wasn’t just using it even when Alex knows very well — and it wouldn’t take an aspiring FBI agent to figure it out — that she was.

But she feels like maybe they know each other now. Or at least are starting to know the parts of each other that matter.

•••

“So you and Caleb?” 

It comes out as an innocent question, just one friendly roommate comment to another. She’s seen them together, seen them sneaking off together. And she’s seen the flush on Shelby’s cheeks when she comes back, seen the sparkle in her eye. She hates Caleb, Shelby says, but Alex has seen that type of hate before, has seen it in herself, and it’s usually ended with clothes on the floor and bodies entwined in the backseat of someone’s car.

“So you and Ryan?” comes the reply, and it’s not at all the answer that she wants or the one that she is hoping for, but she should have seen it coming because Shelby is as good at deflecting as Alex is.

“Who said there’s a me and Ryan?”

“Who said there’s a me and Caleb?”

•••

There is an Alex and Ryan though. There is also a Shelby and Caleb. Neither are sure why. Because they are there, because it’s fun, because it’s easier than admitting the truth. Because it’s expected of them and they don’t want to give anyone a reason to look closer.

Neither regrets it, but neither lasts. Ryan leaves. Caleb comes back. Neither man is who they really want. They both know it. They say goodbye on a New Year’s night, head back to their dormitory alone.

But they are not alone. Not at all. Not ever. Not again.

•••

It’s silent in their room. The whispers have stopped, and now there is just the soft movement of lips brushing against skin and hands touching places lips aren’t covering, caressing down legs and over breasts and through hair. Moving together, in silence, letting no one else hear, even if everyone else is gone for the holidays, not thinking of anything else or anyone else.

When they are done and are still lying together, foreheads pressed against each other, Shelby speaks, and for once there is no smirk and no sign of laugher and in its place there is something that Alex thinks looks a little like uncertainty. 

“But is there a Shelby and Alex?” Shelby asks into the dark, and her voice is soft, serious and her eyes are boring into Alex’s, even if Alex can’t really see them all that clearly.

Alex wraps her fingers into Shelby’s, looks at them entwined in the dark. “I think there can be,” she says, and she sets about trying to prove it.


End file.
